LUDWIG VON BEETHOVEN.
NO. 1017
TO B. SCHOTT & SON, MAINZ
(Summer, 1824).
Dear Sirs:
I only tell you that next week the works will certainly be sent off. You will easily understand, if you only imagine to yourself, that with uncertain copying I have to look through each part separately—for this branch has already decreased here in proportion as tuning has been taken up. Everywhere poverty of spirit—and of purse! Your Cecilia I have not yet received.
The Overture which you had from my brother was performed here a few days ago, and I received high praise for it, etc.—but what is all that in comparison with the great Tone-Master above—above—above—and with right the greatest of all, while here below everything is a mockery—we the little dwarfs are the highest!!!?? You will receive the quartet at the same time as the other works. You are so open and frank—qualities which I have never yet noticed in publishers—and this pleases me. Let us shake hands over it; who knows whether I shall not do that in person and soon! I should be glad if you would now at once forward the honorarium for the quartet to Friess, for I just now want a great deal of money; everything must come to me from abroad, and here and there a delay arises—through my own fault. My brother adds what is necessary about the works offered to, and accepted by, you. I greet you heartily. Junker, as I see from your newspaper, is still living; he was one of the first who noticed me, an innocent and nothing more. Greet him.
In greatest haste, and yet not of shortest standing,
Yours,